By Robin Sam
(Devotion passage: Joshua 11 to 13)
I like the word wholehearted. There’s something beautiful about it. The excitement and the first rush of adrenaline at the sight of your loved one and the pangs of a love breakup are all felt in the heart, people who have been in and out of love would tell you.
These days, some of the popular back-of-the bus advertisements in Chennai, the city where I live, have to do with the heart too. They call it the 64-Slice CT. It’s touted as a big breakthrough in technology. Apparently, 64-Slice is ushering in a new era in CT imaging by giving physicians the ability to see more anatomical detail in only a fraction of the time. While traditional angiography takes four to five hours, the 64-Slice CT is said to take only 15 to 30 minutes! What more, the new angiography technology allows doctors to view even the smallest of arteries in the brain, heart, and peripheral vascular system. Whew!
But I doubt if the 64-Slice angio can tell us about one’s heart’s condition in terms of love, devotion, commitment and obedience. No breakthrough technology, however cutting-edge it is, can gauge the matters of one’s heart.
The Bible is full of people who followed God wholeheartedly. Caleb, son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite and Joshua son of Nun followed the Lord wholeheartedly, Numbers 32:12 tells us. The Bible passage for our devotion today, Joshua 11 to 13, does not use the exact word but uses a set of words of phrases with similar meaning. You may want to look up verses 9, 11, 12, 14, 15 and 17 in Joshua 11 yourself to see what I am referring to.
The passage (Joshua 11, 12 and 13) teaches us a few key things in life, the most important among them being this:
1) Key to total success? Total obedience
After the fall of Jericho, Joshua and his people must have thought the conquest of Ai would be a cakewalk. Little did they know about the sin of one man – Achan son of Carmi from the tribe of Judah. He did what was prohibited. However, when restitution was done, the Lord turned from His fierce anger (Joshua 7:26). After the disastrous rout at the hands of the men of Ai, Joshua and his people were careful to do whatever was told of them. That’s where wholeheartedness enters the picture. When the Israelites completely obeyed God in annihilating the enemies, God gave them victory over not just one king but 31 kings (Joshua 12:9-24) Wholeheartedness in one’s devotion to God gets him wholesome blessings.
2) Victory as God deems and determines
Although victory over negative forces is guaranteed to a child of God, it need not necessarily come as quickly as he or she expects. It need not even be the way he or she thinks. When Jabin king of Hazor ganged up against the Israelites against people from 14 other regions, God told Joshua that within 24 hours they would be handed over to the Israelites. Although the battle was won in a day, the war dragged on. In Joshua 11:118 we read: ‘Joshua waged war against all these kings for a long time.’ Victory over circumstances, evil forces and men inimical to God is assured for a believer but God decides when and how it will be shaped.
3) God can also work in the enemy’s heart
Our God is sovereign. He knows the devises of every heart – good and bad. He not only reads our thoughts but has the power to shape them too. He is the righteous God who examines our inner thoughts and motives (Psalm 7:9). When the news of the defeat and the eventual assassination of the five Amorite kings spread far and wide, Jabin, king of Hazor, a provincial chieftain, summoned other chieftains and set out against the Israelites. There was no intelligence that the Israelites were planning to ambush him or others, Joshua had not sent anyone to spy Hazor or other regions either. There was only a perceived threat from the Israelites. Why did this happen? Joshua 11:20 gives us the answer. Just as He had hardened the heart of the pharaoh, the Lord also put it in the kings’ hearts to war against Israel. Why? The same verse says ‘…so that he might destroy them totally, exterminating them without mercy, as the Lord had commanded Moses.’ The destruction of Israel’s enemies was conceived in the Lord’s mind. He will leave no stone unturned to accomplish it.
4) Fulfillment of all of God’s promises may not happen in our lifetime
Hebrews 11:39 has a seemingly sad verse: “And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise…’ When I read it for the first time ever, I said to myself: ‘What’s the point of my faith then?’ Although our faith may seem like a hopeless entity, that’s precisely what is counted in our account. “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, being convinced of what we do not see (Hebrews 11:1). Moses defeated 2 kings (Sihon, king of Amorites and Og, king of Bashan), it is mentioned in Joshua 12:1-6, whereas Joshua had a lot more conquests to his credit. Yet, again we read a seemingly sad verse in Joshua 13:1.
When Joshua was old and well advanced in years, the Lord said to him. “You are very old, and there are still very large areas of land to be taken over.”
God, then goes on to draw out a verbal map of all the unconquered regions. Joshua had no reason to believe that he would be able to wrap up what he began after crossing the Jordan. He was old. Joshua knew it. There may come a time in your life when you will see a list of unfulfilled promises before you. Perhaps, your children have not made it yet in life. Perhaps, the vision of your ministry is still unachieved. That’s a fact that we must accept, hard though it is; but take heart for God is not finished with you yet.
5) God Himself will do the unfinished task
2 Peter 3:9 says God is not slack concerning His promises. What He promised, He will fulfill. Whether or not it occurs during our lifetime is not for us to know. We can be assured of one thing: He who promised is faithful (Hebrews 10:23). What may look like an unfinished task will be wrapped up by God Himself. That’s what God told Joshua, the old warrior (Joshua 13:6). After promising to drive all out the Sidonians before the Israelites, God told Joshua: ‘Be sure to allocate this land to Israel for an inheritance, as I have instructed you, and divide it as an inheritance among the nine tribes and half of the tribe of Manasseh’ (verse 7). In other words, God had a new role for Joshua. From being a warrior leader, Joshua was now to be a family elder who had the power to sign the will and apportion the land for all the tribes of Israel. What must have appeared like an end-of-the-road situation to Joshua suddenly took a new turn. Joshua had a new role in line with his age and outlook.
The condition to fulfill
God’s blessings are conditional. In Joshua 11:6, God told Joshua two things to claim victory over his enemies: ‘You are to hamstring their horses and burn their chariots.’ The conditions have great spiritual significance even today. Why did God ask Israelites to cramp the horses and burn the chariots of the enemy? There are at least three reasons
1) God did not want Israel to adapt the enemies’ war tactics and come to rely on horses and chariots. Their reliance had to be on God always. Israel as a nation had to proclaim Psalm 20:7 always: Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.’
2) Isaiah 2 tells of the day of the Lord. The state of the land before the time is told in verses 6 to 8. There is no dearth of silver and gold and no end to the people’s treasures. The land is full of horses and chariots. Only one thing is missing from the land, and that is the fear of God.
3) The kings from the 14 regions who surrounded Israelites under the leadership of Jabin, king of Hazor, had chariots and horses too (Joshua 11:4). Yet, they were routed because the Lord was not with them.
If you have not yielded your life to God, let me urge you to trust the Lord wholeheartedly and obey Him completely. You may not see all of His promises fulfilled in you or in your lifetime but He who promised will do it. If you have given your life over to God, may this be your prayer:
‘O Lord, teach me how you want me to live! Then I will obey your commands. Make me wholeheartedly committed to you’ (Psalm 86:11).
In Jesus’ Name. Amen!
Other latest messages from the same writer
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Robin Sam is the founding editor of The Christian Messenger newspaper. A journalist with over 16 years of experience, he has worked with The Indian Express, Sify.com and Yahoo! besides several other publications. He quit his job in 2008 to get into full-time media ministry. You can contact him at editor [at] christianmessenger [dot] in
